EVENTS

Look at the fabulous ponyskin toilet cover

Here’s a thrilling item from 2008 – somebody called Mario Correa pays a visit to Surry* Hill, the 18,000 square foot house of DC “Superlobbyists” Edwina and Ed Rogers. Inside the palatial residence with hot and cold running champagne, Edwina Rogers shows the host how she wraps speaker gifts for a conference she’s having: she wraps them in money. Isn’t that fun and exciting? Oh yes it’s very fun and exciting.

Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service. The United States Secret Service web address is www.secretservice.gov.

Menyambal @ 1: Actually, I think she does grasp that the money is useless cut up. It’s just that she’s viewing it as already spent; she purchased wrapping paper and is using it as such and it’s just as much money spent as with any other fancy wrapping paper. Which does make sense, in my opinion; the problem is that it looks even more wasteful to those without much money.

Digby: Those of us who follow politics from far outside the beltway are often amused at the way the DC estabishment has somehow convinced itself that it is a small town in middle American ca. 1937 and they are all Jimmy Stewarts and Donna Reeds. Those of us blue state heathens who live in big cities with big power centers particularly know how self serving and absurd this is.
[…]
These are the good ole boy Republicans who hold fancy “Pig Pickin’parties” and claim to represent Real Americans — it’s one of the greatest con jobs ever perpetrated. I’ve got no problem with people getting rich — I’ve got a lot of problems with people doing it by stealing money from the taxpayers while wearing a cross and condemning others’ morality.

This little community of newly minted aristocrats needs to be broken up. This can be accomplished by denying them any more taxpayer funded plunder and putting a few of them under the microscope and possibly in jail. At the very least, they should be exposed for the phonies they are. I suspect that most Americans don’t really give a damn about this stuff when things are going well. It’s when the economy goes south — and it will — that they will lose their patience. Be prepared. This story and others like it will add fuel to the fire.

I wish Digby had been right about this community of sanctimonious plundering phonies getting broken up due to outraged fallout from the GFC, but they still influence enough votes in Congress and Senate to keep on stacking the Supreme Court and other institutions, so they’re still there.

The Republican ideological elite haven’t learnt anything about the foreseeable disasters that will come with more and more deregulation, either. From Digby today: Sick and tired of being tired – America’s culture of overwork and how it’s costing lives.